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The Ad Campaign for a ‘New’ G.M.

Can General Motors make up for decades of mistakes and misfires in a minute?

That is the ambitious goal of a 60-second commercial to begin running on television on Wednesday. The spot is already available on a Web site (gmreinvention.com) and on YouTube.

The commercial is part mea culpa, part gauzy paean to the concept of a “new” General Motors. Although portions seem self-serving, there are moments when a viewer may think, “Hey, maybe G.M. deserves another chance.”

Such moments come when the commercial speaks plainly. “Let’s be completely honest,” an announcer says. “No company wants to go through this.”

“General Motors needs to start over, in order to get stronger,” he adds.

Other effective moments come when the announcer says things G.M. ought to have said years ago.

“There was a time when eight different brands made sense,” the announcer says. “Not any more.” Critics have contended that General Motors was spreading its marketing resources too thin across too many nameplates.

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Other elements are overly slick for an apologetic commercial. There is too much use of the echo effect that writers hope will elevate prose to poetry. For instance, the announcer intones: “This is not about going out of business. This is about getting down to business.”

And the imagery on screen veers from powerful to bland. There is a wonderful zoom-in on the fist of the boxer Joe Louis that stands on Jefferson Avenue in downtown Detroit, as if to say, “Pow! Bam! We’re coming back!”

But there are also generic photographs — a moon landing, sports teams, a butterfly, a horse race, an American flag — that could have come from any feel-good corporate image campaign.

The commercial was created by Deutsch, an advertising agency owned by the Interpublic Group of Companies that handles assignments for G.M. like producing campaigns for the (soon to be divested) Saturn division.